Goals, Intentions and Word Of The Year 2021
This new year is different. This new year there is not the clean break to “start again” that other years have. Of course this is always the case; the ticking over of a digit at the end of the year denotes nothing but our human need to control and measure time. Usually we manage to kid ourselves that the ticking over is meaningful, that it can birth us anew into a whole different world – but this year, with ongoing lockdowns and vaccine rollouts and continuing deaths around the world, it is harder to feel the change in the air.
I didn’t meant for this post to start off quite so depressing. Amongst it all, always, are reasons for optimism and hope – the very fact that there are vaccines rolling out, that people are continuing to keep their communities safe, for instance. I suppose what I’m saying is, it feels pretty darn arbitrary to be setting goals right now. 2020 showed us how laughably easy it is for your precious goals and dreams to be swept away by a torrent of circumstance and doomscrolling. There is so much that seems more important than our little goals, and in this limbo it feels a little pointless to set goals we have no idea we’ll be able to work on or not.
However, there is a point. The point is, it makes me feel better.
This new year is different. This new year there is not the clean break to “start again” that other years have. Of course this is always the case; the ticking over of a digit at the end of the year denotes nothing but our human need to control and measure time. Usually we manage to kid ourselves that the ticking over is meaningful, that it can birth us anew into a whole different world – but this year, with ongoing lockdowns and vaccine rollouts and continuing deaths around the world, it is harder to feel the change in the air.
I didn’t meant for this post to start off quite so depressing. Amongst it all, always, are reasons for optimism and hope – the very fact that there are vaccines rolling out, that people are continuing to keep their communities safe, for instance. I suppose what I’m saying is, it feels pretty darn arbitrary to be setting goals right now. 2020 showed us how laughably easy it is for your precious goals and dreams to be swept away by a torrent of circumstance and doomscrolling. There is so much that seems more important than our little goals, and in this limbo it feels a little pointless to set goals we have no idea we’ll be able to work on or not.
However, there is a point. The point is, it makes me feel better.
2021 Goals
Turnover £56k in 2021
In order to pay all my bills, have a little aside for unforeseen issues and be able to have lunch with a friend every couple of weeks, I need to make £27k – that is where I break even as a human. My business expenses are generally around £6k a year, and so I’d like to take home £50k to have a financial buffer in a year with lots of personal uncertainty.Maybe this sounds like a big goal, maybe it sounds quite pedestrian in a world of six figure incomes. Previously I’ve set myself big money goals, but I don’t actually find them particularly inspiring – in fact, they feel like pressure rather than momentum. So I’m shooting for what I need to feel safe.
Create a new book proposal and submit to agents by the autumn
I mentioned my first book proposal in my end of year thoughts, and how what I created was probably a better course than a book. So this year, I want to start over with the book and approach it differently. I want to take time to just explore, to jot down random paragraphs and play with ideas and let the book emerge rather than force it through a piping nozzle that’s the wrong shape. But also, I want it to happen - so I am putting a deadline on the play and a deadline on turning it into something.
Read 24 books
I know some people read 24 books in a month, but a numerical goal has to be achievable. In 2020 I finished 11 books (and three that I’m halfway through); two years ago I read ONE book. Two books a month feels a do-able stretch but also that I could beat it, which is apparently important to my competitive streak.
Go on a solo trip
This may be a little ambitious given, you know, everything. But perhaps around my thirtieth, or maybe in the summer, I want to take a trip on my own. I’ve done this a lot in the past for work and have always been enamoured with the romanticism, but have never been very good at it. When it’s “just me” I don’t make the effort to have nice dinners and visit nice places like I do with a companion – I’d like to take a solo trip where I treat myself.
2021 Intentions
Move my body every day
There was a point about six months ago, where, overwhelmed and in crisis, I was living off garlic pizza bread and spending most of my time in bed. Since ending my relationship I have walked, more or less, every single day. In the ten minutes it takes for the bath to run I started doing a short circuit of exercises remembered from my gym bunny days on the bathroom floor. I started stretching my back out in the morning's before crumpling it back in front of the laptop. It’s been tiny, tiny increments, but I feel the strength in my body and a greater ease inside it. So, continuing into 2021, I will move my body every day. Even just for ten minutes.
Write every day
I always hated the idea of doing something every day. I love variety and would always rather spend a couple of hours once a week bashing out thousands of words than doing a little every day. I probably will still approach blogging and podcasts in this way. But in December I took a Beth Kempton writing class, where each day you listened to a poem and then free-wrote for five minutes on anything the poem sparked.I noticed a few things doing this. One, I wrote some really good stuff in those sparks. Two, my sentences got better and my imagination more vibrant in my day to day. Three, after the doing the five minute spark I would often end up in another Google doc adding some extra paragraphs to a different project. Fourth, I loved the rhythm of ending my day with five minutes of writing, a series of punctuation marks in my week. So, as part of my book project, but mostly for myself, I will write every day. Even just for five minutes.
Gift myself something every month
I have a tendency towards ascetism; someone once told me I was a “natural minimalist”. I talk myself out purchases with ease and am happy to go without things that aren’t in the bottom two tiers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. But this is also how you get to the point where you’re eating nothing but garlic pizza bread and sleeping 12 hours a day. So in 2021, I promise to treat myself.I’ve set myself a gifting budget that is just to be spent on me. It might be something big, like that solo trip or a new tarot deck; it might be a bunch of flowers from the supermarket. But I want, in big and small ways, to make sure I’m making myself feel special. This is also going to include booking time off. When I set up my email auto-responder in December I noticed that I hadn’t put my out of office on since last Christmas - so I will gift myself some intentional time off too.
More intuitive yes’s
As I also touched on in my end of year post, last year I ended up, unconsciously, sticking to my comfort zone and saying no to almost everything. I thought I was protecting myself from burnout and affirming boundaries, but really I was closing myself off from the world. In 2021 I want to reconnect. When I see an online event I like the sound of I’m just going to book it instead of give into all the reasons why it would be more comfortable to not bother. When I’m invited to speak or write somewhere, it won’t be an automatic no but instead I’m going to think (crazy right?) about whether it’s actually a yes. This isn’t saying yes to everything, it’s just not saying no to everything – taking the time to check in with what I truly want to do.
“This is not a year of growth, but of discovery.” That’s the last thing I wrote to myself in my end of year tarot spread. When I say growth, I’m talking about business. I don’t need to worry over Instagram followers and newsletter subscribers this year, I don’t need to shoot for all the figures or be the world’s most visible woman. I feel tired just thinking about “pushing for growth”. I have some repairing to do, some recovering.
But most of all, I have some discovering to do. Discovering who I am as a newly-single-nearly-30-year-old. Discovering what I actually like to do when I’m not placating a partner. Discovering how my purpose, and it’s application in my work, shifts in this new phase. Which feels altogether more exciting… and I hope you’ll join me.
